


The Mature Thing To Do

by camwolfe



Series: The Water Can't Drown Me [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:39:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3964687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camwolfe/pseuds/camwolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was already a bad day, and it just kept getting worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mature Thing To Do

**Author's Note:**

> warning for mentions of animal abuse!

“Steve. Wake up.”

“Ungh,” Steve mumbled. He was lying on his stomach in bed, his face buried in his pillow.

“Come on,” Bucky said impatiently. “It’s noon. I’m bored.”

“Then go unload the dishwasher,” Steve said into his pillow.

“I already did that.”

Steve raised his head, looking at Bucky through bleary eyes. “You willingly unloaded the dishwasher?”

“Yes!” Bucky said. He flopped down onto the bed next to Steve. “That’s how bored I am.”

“Take Sergeant for a walk.”

“He wants to go to the dog park.”

Steve sighed and dropped his face back into his pillow. “He’s a dog. You don’t know what he wants.”

“I definitely do. He wants to go to the dog park.”

“Then go,” Steve snapped, more angrily than he’d meant to. He immediately regretted it.

Bucky was quiet for a few moments before he spoke again.

“I wanted to go with you, though,” he said. “I feel like I haven’t even seen you in weeks.”

“We live together.”

“Yeah, but it seems like we’re never home at the same time anymore. And you’ve been going to bed so early.”

“I’m tired,” Steve mumbled. It wasn’t a lie.

“Yeah, well, you’ve been sleeping for like fourteen hours. Come on, get up.”

Bucky shook Steve’s shoulder. Steve twisted around and shrugged him off, rolling over on his side so that his back was to Bucky.

“Go away,” Steve snapped. “Leave me alone.”

There was a long pause.

“Fine,” Bucky said. Steve felt him roll off the bed.

Bucky left the room. He didn’t slam the bedroom door behind him, but he definitely shut it firmly.

Steve groaned and flopped back onto his pillow.

 

After a few minutes of lying there, stewing in his own self-hatred, Steve dragged himself out of bed. He threw some clothes on and headed downstairs.

Bucky was sitting on the couch, watching tv. Sergeant was draped over his lap, glaring at Steve banefully.

“Hey,” Steve said carefully, sitting down next to Bucky.

“Hey,” Bucky replied. He stared resolutely at the tv.

Steve sighed and gently nudged Bucky with his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Steve said firmly. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky repeated.

Steve waited for another few minutes, but Bucky didn’t say anything else.

“You still want to go to the park?” Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged. “Nah. I only wanted to go if you did.”

“I do.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You’re just saying that.”

“Nope,” Steve said. “Sergeant! Wanna go to the dog park?”

Sergeant’s ears perked up, and he leapt off the couch.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” Bucky grumbled. Sure enough, Sergeant bounded over to hover by the door, his tail wagging. He glanced back at Steve and Bucky excitedly.

Bucky looked at Steve, who smiled winningly. Bucky sighed and rolled off the couch.

 

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in the grass in the dog park. Sergeant was in the middle of a group of dogs, being chased around by a vicious-looking Chihuahua.

Steve was lying on his back in the grass, his face turned up to the sun. Bucky was sitting next to him, pulling handfuls of grass out of the ground and carefully placing each blade of grass on Steve’s face.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked.

“Giving you grass eyebrows.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Thanks. I really needed that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Steve sat up as Sergeant ran over to them, brushing the grass off his eyebrows.

“Hey, bud,” Bucky said happily. Sergeant licked his face enthusiastically, nearly knocking Bucky backward. “See? Told you he wanted to go to the dog park.”

“Okay, dog whisperer,” Steve said. He laid back in the grass, closing his eyes as the sun beat down on his face. “You win.”

He heard Sergeant run off again. Bucky laid down too, resting his head on Steve’s stomach.

“This is nice, right?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Bucky said. “We should do stuff like this more often.”

“Like what?” Steve asked. He ran his hands through Bucky’s hair. “Go to the dog park?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Just… do things.”

“As opposed to not doing things?”

Bucky sighed. “You know what I mean, asshole.”

“I don’t!”

“Doing things _together_.”

“We do stuff together all the time,” Steve said. “We made dinner together last night.”

“No, we didn’t! I made dinner and you ate in two minutes and then went to work.”

“Well, I had to go to work. I didn’t have a choice.”

Bucky sat up. Steve opened his eyes to see Bucky frowning down at him.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Why are you doing this?” Bucky asked softly.

Steve sat up too. “Doing what?”

Bucky scowled and looked down at the grass. “You just… argue with everything I say. Like I can’t even say ‘the sky is blue’ or something like that without you telling me that I’m wrong.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue, which kind of proved Bucky’s point.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. “I don’t… I don’t mean to.”

Bucky propped his elbows on his knees. “I know you don’t. I just… did I do something? Like are you mad at me for something?”

Steve stared at him, horrified. “No! Of course not.”

Bucky shrugged. “It just kind of seems like you don’t want me around, most of the time.”

That was exactly the opposite of how Steve felt, but he knew what Bucky meant. It was just that Bucky was always there, and Steve kept accidentally taking out his irritability and anger on him.

“No, I do!” Steve said frantically. That old fear filled him again, that Bucky was going to leave him. After all, why would he want to be with Steve in the first place? Especially considering the way that Steve had been treating him. “I…”

Steve wanted to try and explain, even though he wasn’t entirely sure if he could put it into words.

Of course, at that moment, Bucky’s eyes focused on something behind Steve.

“Hey,” he said sharply. He got to his feet, stepping around Steve.

Steve turned around. There was a man standing a few feet away from Sergeant. It looked like he was talking to him.

“Can I help you?” Bucky called out. He jogged closer to them, Steve following right behind.

Sergeant turned as Bucky approached. He darted over and ducked behind Bucky’s legs, an uncharacteristic behaviour for him.

“That’s my dog,” the man said, pointing at Sergeant.

Steve and Bucky looked at each other.

“No,” Bucky said slowly. “He’s ours.”

“I swear that’s my dog.”

“I bought him this collar,” Bucky said, pointing to the fancy leather collar that they’d spent way too much money on. “He’s microchipped and registered to us.”

“That’s my dog,” the guy said. “His name is Chip.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest, and Bucky scowled.

“Well, I found him starving and eating garbage to survive,” Bucky said. “You wanna explain that?”

The guy shrugged. “I lost him.”

Bucky shot Steve a worried look. Steve’s heart clenched. Bucky loved that dog more than pretty much anything. Steve didn’t doubt that Bucky loved the dog more than he loved Steve.

“What about the scars?” Steve asked. He gently wrapped his hand around Sergeant’s collar and tugged him forward, showing the man the scars all over Sergeant’s head and back.

“He’s a dog,” the man said. “He got into fights sometimes.”

“He doesn’t get into any fights with us,” Steve said. “He’s not aggressive at all.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you then,” the guy said. “That’s my dog.”

Bucky curled his hand possessively around Sergeant’s collar. Steve crossed his arms.

“Well, if you’re that certain that he’s yours, you can call the police,” Steve said. “Or the vet. We found him starving and sick, and we took him in. He’s legally ours.”

The man also crossed his arms, squaring his shoulders. He was still at least three inches shorter than Steve, though, and it didn’t have much effect.

“Come on, Buck,” Steve said. He turned and started walking away, back towards their car. Bucky followed him, his hand still on Sergeant’s collar.

“Hey!” the guy shouted. “You can’t just walk away with my dog!”

“I told you,” Steve called over his shoulder. “You can call the police if you want.”

“Is he really legally ours?” Bucky asked under his breath as he walked next to Steve.

“I dunno,” Steve muttered back. “I mean, we do have him registered with the vet. But we never technically bought him.”

Bucky frowned, staring straight ahead. “Well, he’s not going with that asshole. Fights? Sergeant would never willingly fight someone. Or another dog.”

“I know,” Steve said. “Don’t worry – “

Someone grabbed Steve’s shoulder and pulled him around. Steve turned just in time for the guy to punch him in the face.

Steve stumbled backward, blood already starting to gush from his nose. He kicked out instinctively, and managed to get in a lucky kick to the guy’s groin.

The man hit the ground. Steve kicked him once more, just to make sure he’d stay down.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky was saying, over and over. He already had his phone out and was calling the police.

By the time the police showed up, the guy was still groaning on the ground. Once they had him in handcuffs, they offered Steve and Bucky a ride to the hospital. Steve waved them off, and they finally managed to get back to their car.

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” Bucky asked as he drove. Steve was slumped in the passenger’s seat, his hands over his throbbing nose.

“Yes,” Steve said nasally. “I don’t think it’s broken.”

“How do you know that it’s not?” Bucky asked. Sergeant whined from where he was sitting in the backseat and licked Steve’s ear.

“Well, I don’t really,” Steve said. “But I’m sure as hell not going to the hospital for it.”

Bucky sighed and gave up. “Fine. But if you end up with a crooked nose, I want it on record that I said you should go to the hospital and get it checked out. And I get to say I told you so as many times as I want.”

“Deal,” Steve said. He winced as more blood started to trickle down his face. “Am I getting blood on the seat?”

“Probably,” Bucky said. “Who cares. This car is a piece of shit anyway.”

“True.”

Once they got home, Bucky literally dragged Steve inside and made him sit down on the couch.

“Bucky, I’m going to get blood on the couch now,” Steve complained.

“I don’t care,” Bucky called from the kitchen. “We can clean it later. Do we have any bags of frozen peas or something?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because peas are disgusting and we’d never eat them?”

“Okay, fine. What about a bag of frozen strawberries?”

“That’ll probably work,” Steve said. He winced and tilted his head back as his nose started to gush blood again.

“Don’t do that,” Bucky said, coming back into the living room. “The blood’ll just drain down the back of your throat into your stomach if you do that. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“Great,” Steve said. “This is just great.”

“Especially because you didn’t even start the fight this time,” Bucky said. He sat down next to Steve and gently held the bag of frozen strawberries against his face. “You were doing the mature thing and walking away.”

“Lot of good that did,” Steve said mournfully. He took the bag from Bucky and covered his nose with it.

“Aw jeez,” Bucky said. He sounded distressed. “This is so bad. I can’t believe you got hurt again.”

“It’s fine, Buck,” Steve said nasally. He slumped back against the couch.

“It’s not. I hate seeing you get hurt,” Bucky complained. He disappeared back into the kitchen. “Do you want some painkillers?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Come on, we’ve got plenty,” Bucky said. “I’ll check upstairs.”

He dashed upstairs before Steve could stop him, Sergeant bounding after him. He reappeared with his arms filled with pill bottles.

“Take your pick,” Bucky said. He knelt down next to the coffee table and set all of them out.

“Maybe just some advil or something,” Steve said. Bucky passed him the pills.

“You should probably eat something with that,” Bucky said. He jumped up again and disappeared into the kitchen. “Do you want dinner?”

“I can make it,” Steve called.

“No!” Bucky shouted from the kitchen. “First of all, you’re hurt. Second of all, you’re going to get blood everywhere.

Steve looked down at his previously clean t-shirt and winced.

“You don’t have to make me dinner just because I got punched in the face,” Steve said.

“No, but I want to. Okay, your options are spaghetti and… spaghetti.”

“I think I’ll choose spaghetti.”

“Okay,” Bucky called. “Spaghetti, coming right up!”

Steve shook his head as he watched Bucky rush around the house. He didn’t deserve someone like this, he really didn’t.

Bucky made them both dinner and then did the dishes afterward. He made Steve take a shower to wash the blood off, and then dragged him back down to the couch so that Steve could sit upright instead of lying down.

Bucky turned Netflix on and clicked on one of Steve’s favourite tv shows. He took Sergeant for a walk, came back and gave Sergeant a bath, packed both his and Steve’s lunches for the next day, and then finally crashed on the couch next to Steve.

Steve didn’t deserve this.

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: bucky does not actually love the dog more than he loves steve. steve just thinks so
> 
> I am on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)!


End file.
